It’s a well-worn meme at this point that the writing staff of “The Simpsons” must be time travelers with all the things they’ve managed to predict over the years. From Donald Trump’s presidency to Disney buying out 20th Century Fox, things that are played for simple gags on the animated sitcom end up eerily coming to fruition.
Of course, there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for why “The Simpsons” is able to do this. The show’s been on the air for decades, with hundreds of episodes, so it’s bound to get something right now and then. Add in the fact the show regularly dabbles in social satire, poking fun at things that are relevant at the time, and it only makes sense that history would wind up repeating itself to where it looks like the show was super prescient. Still, it’s impressive to watch all the same, especially when it comes to how much advanced technology has been featured on the show years ago only to actually come out years later.
Certain devices, like smartwatches, were bound to come out one way or another, but it’s far more humorous when something like a baby translator ends up being made — sort of. Here’s all the cool tech “The Simpsons” featured years before it was a reality. Consider it an incentive to check in with newer episodes of “The Simpsons” to see what society might get 20 years from now.
The Yard Work Simulator became FarmVille
On “The Simpsons” Season 9, Episode 12 — “Bart Carny” – Marge tries to get the kids to do some yard work. She’s disappointed when they refuse, but Homer, as his usual oblivious self, ends up taking them all to the carnival anyways. Once there, they want to go on all fun rides, with Bart expressing his enthusiasm over trying the “Yard Work Simulator,” despite his reluctance to perform any actual yard work earlier.
The joke is clear — kids don’t want to do anything productive, but they’ll jump at the chance to perform manual labor if it’s presented as a cool video game. That’s pretty much the ideology behind “FarmVille,” the Facebook game that took the world by storm in the 2010s. People could log on to plant crops and raise livestock, with the main feature being that your Facebook friends could visit your farm to help you out. It sounds like a lot of time and energy when one could learn actual skills like planting their own garden to become a little more self-sufficient in real life.
Sadly, all that time invested into “FarmVille” was all for naught when the game shut down for good at the end of 2020. In a way, “The Simpsons” joke could be seen as predicting the prevalence of all sorts of mundane video game simulators, such as “Car Wash Simulator” and “PowerWash Simulator.” At the very least, perhaps these simulators show people how fun and rewarding it can be to do these tasks in real life.
The Simpsons predicts smartwatches
When it comes to “The Simpsons” predictions, the Holy Grail remains the Donald Trump premonition in Season 11’s “Bart to the Future.” This is just a throwaway line in a flash forward episode showing Lisa as President of the United States, but before that, “The Simpsons” had a different peek into the future with Season 6’s “Lisa’s Wedding.” It sees Lisa almost getting married to her first love, Hugh Parkfield. When his first attempt at a proposal goes wrong, he immediately speaks into a phone located on his wrist.
It’s easy to see this as a precursor to modern smartwatches where people can make calls and keep track of all sorts of important data right from their wrist. Of course, real-world smartwatches simply have little screens instead of flipping open like an old-fashioned phone, but Hugh’s gadget does exude a certain old-school charm.
To be fair, there’s a long line of media predicting smartwatches before even “The Simpsons” was around. Arguably, the first well-known example came in the 1940s with “Dick Tracy” comics, with the titular character sporting a two-way radio on his wrist. “The Jetsons” and “Star Trek” followed suit, and there’s the real-world forefather to smartwatches with the Hamilton Pulsar Time Computer. This device, which looks super futuristic and featured an LED display, came out all the way back in 1972. Hugh’s smartwatch almost seems crude by comparison.
Video calling continues making things awkward
“Lisa’s Wedding” actually has quite a few technological predictions that were supposed to come out in the far-off year of 2010 — in case you need to be reminded of how long “The Simpsons” has been airing. After Hugh proposes, Lisa calls Marge on a video phone to tell her the good news. Much like Hugh’s smartwatch featuring a flip phone, the video calling device has some old-school sensibilities, such as how you still need to input a number using a rotary dial.
Still, it manages to predict how people could call one another and actually see who they’re speaking with. It wouldn’t take too long for this technology to appear, as smartphones with front-facing camera began making waves in the late 2000s. It’s not bad for a TV episode that came out in 1995. However, the technology became far more commonplace with the introduction of the iPhone 4, which came with FaceTime, allowing even more people to partake in this futuristic novelty. In fact, FaceTime came out in – 2010? Okay, are we sure “The Simpsons” writers aren’t actually time travelers with this one?
The video conferencing scene on “Lisa’s Wedding” is even more humorous with Marge not realizing she’s on a video call, like crossing her fingers when promising Homer won’t ruin Lisa’s big day. Anyone who’s ever had an awkward conversation with a parent who didn’t quite understand these newfangled gadgets can surely relate.
Robot librarians slowly taking over
“The Simpsons” certainly didn’t invent robots, and society has been hard at work trying to create these mechanical entities. Sometimes, this leads to useful inventions, but other times, it leads to some truly haunting robots getting put out into the world. In “Lisa’s Wedding,” the robots featured here — not counting the tin men seen toward the beginning — include a librarian whose face catches fire after crying.
Roboticists may be hard at work creating more realistic humanoid robots, but
